Rethinking the
Educational System
(or at least small parts )
The Future of Education
Thomas Ryberg (ryberg@hum.aau.dk)
@tryberg (twitter)
Professor - E-Learning Lab – Center for User Driven Innovation, Learning and Design
Dept. of Communication and Psychology Aalborg University, Denmark
Future of Education
• The future of education is often viewed through the lens of dawning and emerging technologies, so
perhaps I should be speaking of:
• And how they might revolutionise or disrupt education Robots
Artifical Intelligence (AI) Learning Analytics
Coding Curriculum
Big Data MOOCs
However…. I am not going to do that!
• We assume educational technologies will bring benevolent changes to education
– better learning, student-centred pedagogies, enhance motivation, will prepare students for the ‘future’
• But ‘future’ is not a set path – future of education is a struggle, and technology might mislead us!
• Will highlight the dark sides of educational technologies
• Also the opportunities they offer for PBL - and what PBL has to offer to educational technologies!
• Will provide two examples/ideas of digital PBL practice
Vocal discourses of imminent and radical changes
– Game-changers, disruptions, paradigm-shifts, 2.0s, don’t miss the train Vocal discourses of imminent and radical changes
– Game-changers, disruptions, paradigm-shifts, 2.0s, don’t miss the train
In #EdTech Huge gaps between:
The actual qualitative changes technologies have brought about in edcuation and the speed of those changes
The actual qualitative changes technologies have brought about in edcuation and the speed of those changes
The same ‘train of thought’ seems to return to the station without realising it has been there before…a city ring
The same ‘train of thought’ seems to return to the station without
realising it has been there before…a city ring
#EDTECH IS BIG BUSINESS
IT’S FULL OF:
IT’S FULL OF:
But also unrealised potential…
But also unrealised
potential…
But let’s start by going
(Of educational
technology)
“There must be an industrial revolution in education in which educational science and the ingenuity of
educational technology combine to modernize the grossly inefficient and clumsy procedures of conventional education.”
- Sidney Pressey, 1924 , inventor of the Automatic Teacher, the first electronic device used in schools
The motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and...in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.
—Thomas Edison, 1922
Prof. C. C. Clark of New York University conducting a class from his home (1935)
Source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/predictions-for-educational-tv-in-the-1930s-107574983
“The scene will be a
commonplace one tomorrow ,
without a doubt, when television will be as indispensable to our every day home life as the radio program receiver is today.”
(The April 1935 issue of Short Wave Craft magazine)
“Tomorrow our whole radio broadcast background, so far as the listener is
concerned, will be changed when television becomes a common everyday
convenience. Not only will various subjects be taught or lectured upon and
brought into our homes, but the latest styles in men’s and women’s clothes, furniture, etc., will be flashed on our home television screen, and
dozens of other advertised products, travel tours, etc., as well.”
Source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/predictions-for-educational-tv-in-the-1930s-107574983
Nailed it!
….With the advertising….
1954
http://www.idealearninggroup.com/blog/history-of-elearning-e-is-for-evolutionary
Often heard and recited in relation to X
learning technology….Laptops, Ipads,
MOOCs (individual, self-paced learning)
History of #edtech not a neat and orderly progression – rather a struggle between
perspectives / pedagogical ideals (Weller, 2007)
Broadcast view
• Deliver or make content and resources globally available - on demand
• Self-paced, individualised
• Reuse, scalability, cost efficiency (reducing the role of the teacher)
• Also: Control, standardisation, institutionalisation, industrialization
• Mainstream
Discussion view
• Knowledge through
dialogue, collaboration and communcation
• Mutual dependency or
relations between students and between students and facilitators
• Groups, intimacy, relations, cooperation and
collaboration –
dependency in time
• Fringe
Jones, C., & Dirckinck-Holmfeld, L. (2009). Analysing Networked Learning Practices. In L. Dirckinck-Holmfeld, C. Jones, & B. Lindström (Eds.), Analysing Networked Learning Practices in Higher Education and Continuing Professional Development (pp. 10–27). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Weller, M. (2007). Virtual learning environments : effective development and use. London: Routledge.
But maybe we need to rethink?
• Are these dichotomies the main challenges we are facing in education?
• And will educational technology help us resolve these?
Behaviourism - Constructivism Sage on the stage – Guide on the side
Transmission - Transformation
Teacher centred – Student centred
Acquisition – Participation
The real struggle?
• Perhaps struggles are between:
• Market-driven or community-driven Education and
Educational Technology
Kolmos, A., & Holgaard, J. E. (2015). Design of virtual PBL cases for sustainability and employability. In Global Research Community: Collaboration and Developments (pp. 312–323).
Aalborg Universitetsforlag. Retrieved from
http://vbn.aau.dk/files/219797251/Global_research_community_collaboration_and_development_
final.pdf
You say #EdTech won’t change
education as we know it!?
Perhaps…I dunno….
What I do want to say is:
Technology will not radically reshape education to become egalitarian, progressive or student centred…
Radical ideas of education will!....
Technology might even reinforce a market driven perspective and inequality
PBL was (and is) a pretty radical idea within education and thus a
unique opportunity for us!
Question – 2 min
• Have educational technologies transformed pedagogy in your institutions?
– For better or for worse? Or not at all?
Some contemporary examples
• MOOCs
• Big Data & Learning Analytics
• Often educational technologies are emphasised through the rhetoric of ‘public good’, but these qualities are slowly displaced by a ‘market’
perspective
•
2008: Experimental MOOCs (cMOOCs)
– Developed within Academia, No official learning goals or credits. Non-commercial – Readings and distributed activities in digital spaces
•
2012: Popularisation of MOOCs (xMOOCs)
– Ivy-league university company spin-offs (udacity, coursera) promise to ‘disrupt education’
and ‘opening up education to the world’
– Timed and paced, clear syllabus and learning goals, short targeted video-lectures, quizzes, machine-assessment or peer-grading
• Concerns:
–
xMOOCs built on a pedagogy developed in Open Universities since the 60s – however often failed to include the insights developed by existing research
–Highly individualised - little incencitive to collaborate
–
Bottle-neck problem – reducing need for teachers ( ‘academic precariat’)
–‘Open’ – But are course material open, who owns data and work?
–
Unclear business-models – free, freemium, course diploma
–
Neo-colonialism – rather than capacity building - benefitting the ‘haves’ over the
‘have nots’
–
More than disruption it was perhaps a clever way of entering traditional market for educational technology
MOOCs
Massive Open Online Courses
• “Learning analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimising learning and the environments in which it occurs”
• Promises of: Optimising learning for the learner, and teachers’
understanding of the learner.
• Often associated with MOOCs with 1000+ participants and the (big) data they produce throughout a course
• Concerns:
– Technology focus - less on pedagogy and learning
– Ethics and privacy regarding students’ data – and who owns the data?
– Less on how data can be used by students – mainly institution and teachers – Less on supporting analysis of ‘collaboration’ – mainly individual focus
– Success examples about identifying ‘at risk’ students - facilitate management more than improving learning practices
– How do measurements impact our ways of understanding learning and teaching – an overemphasis on what *can* be measured rather than what *should* be measured (e.g.
complex problem solving and collaboration)
Big Data & Learning analytics
The magic mirror of EdTech
• A mirror reflecting our wishes and
desires leaving the darker sides out of view
• MOOCs & Flipped learning also hailed by university managers as a way to cut costs and staff
• As PBL researchers and practitioners we see potentials for collaboration and problem solving, but can easily miss darker sides
• Individualised learning and erosion of
the group as a site for collaboration –
unbundling and micro-degrees
We need to take charge and shape the future of digital PBL
• Navigate in the digital age without loosing the
uniqueness and strengths of PBL
• How to develop PBL
models and practices that challenge the ‘market’ view of education and promote sustainable education?
• Mode 3 – hybrid learning model or The Ecological University (Barnett)
Jamison, A., Kolmos, A., & Holgaard, J. E. (2014). Hybrid Learning: An Integrative Approach to Engineering Education. Journal of Engineering Education, 103(2), 253–
273. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20041
EMERGING MODES OF WORK &
LEARNING
*Personal learning networks*
*Mass collaboration*
Both challenging – in some ways – how we understand
collaboration and group work within PBL and collaborative learning
But are also possibilities
C ha lle ng e! C o m p le x m a as iv e so ci a l a n d pe rs o na l n et w o rk s
Personal Learning Networks (PLNs)
Ego-centric networks formed through e.g. social network sites (facebook, twitter, pinterest)
Traversing and harvesting the ego- centric network for information, ideas, and resources (and contributing)
The individual person’s ability to form and sustain a personal learning network
Many strengths and potentials – but heavily individualised notions of learning underpinning the ideas of PLNs
Personal Learning Networks (PLNs)
Ego-centric networks formed through e.g. social network sites (facebook, twitter, pinterest)
Traversing and harvesting the ego- centric network for information, ideas, and resources (and contributing)
The individual person’s ability to form and sustain a personal learning network
Many strengths and potentials – but heavily individualised notions of learning underpinning the ideas of PLNs
Mass collaboration
Diffuse, uncoordinated mass of people contribute to sustained or more ephemeral constructs
Sustained: Wikipedia, Open Source, Some MOOCs
Ephemeral: wild-fire or flash
activites – #resist – eruptions and burst of hectic activies – short-lived activation of massive networks
Many strengths and potentials – but what is the quality of the contributions, how to get an
overview, diffuse and chaotic, no joint goal – requires knowledge and literacy to draw from and make sense of (information overload) Mass collaboration
Diffuse, uncoordinated mass of people contribute to sustained or more ephemeral constructs
Sustained: Wikipedia, Open Source, Some MOOCs
Ephemeral: wild-fire or flash
activites – #resist – eruptions and burst of hectic activies – short-lived activation of massive networks
Many strengths and potentials – but what is the quality of the contributions, how to get an
overview, diffuse and chaotic, no joint goal – requires knowledge and literacy to draw from and make sense of (information overload)
Challenges to PBL:
How do we ensure that group and project work remains an important learning experíence in a globalised networked world
That PBL remains an anchoring point for students learning experiences and something which meaningfully connects the threads
Challenges to PBL:
How do we ensure that group and project work remains an important learning experíence in a globalised networked world
That PBL remains an anchoring point for students learning experiences and
something which meaningfully connects the threads
Challenges to PBL:
How do we mediate between and knit together the individualised personal learning networks of the students and engage them in meaningful mass-colaborations
We have a ‘wealth of personal learning networks’ in semesters and courses and we have a ressource in students that can engage with others in mass collaborations on important societal challenges (environment, fighting poverty)
Challenges to PBL:
How do we mediate between and knit together the individualised personal learning networks of the students and engage them in meaningful mass-colaborations
We have a ‘wealth of personal learning networks’ in semesters and courses and we have a ressource in students that can engage with others in mass collaborations on important societal challenges (environment, fighting poverty)
Two examples
How we can rethink personal learning networks and mass- collaboration from a PBL Perspective
Flipped semester
Collaborative Open Online Projects (COOPs)
Flipped Semester
• Development project in AAU
(together with Profs. Kolmos, Busk Kofoed, Myrup)
• Currently three 5 ECTS courses + 15 ECTS project
• Relations between courses and semester project challenged
• Flipped Courses might further aggravate this tension
• Rethinking the relations between courses and projects as a flipped semester
5 ECTS course 5 ECTS course 5 ECTS course
15 ECTS project
Flipped Semester
• ‘Problem’ and ‘Problem analysis’ as main vehicle of the semester
• Courses and lectures to become online resources that students can access
– Self-developed internal as well as recommended external
– Material and courses students identify
• Time and activities organised as workshops, discussion groups, seminars, peer-critique and learning
• Use of ICTs & social media to enable students to share, annotate, collaborate, connect and
produce
• Developing a learning community between students and teachers/facilitators
• But also students create Personal Learning Networks
5 ECTS course 5 ECTS course 5 ECTS course 15 ECTS project
problem
problem
AAU online resources
External recommended
resources
Students’ self- selected
15 ECTS project
Project group
workshop
seminar
Peer-
critique seminar
workshop
discussion
Project group Project group
discussion
Collaborative sensemaking and learning – developing a learning community ICTs & Social Media to: share, annotate, collaborate, connect and produce
problem
problem
COOP – Collaborative Open Online Projects
• Collaborations between universities, NGOs, industry to identify relevant grand challenges
• Global real-world and open-ended problem in a local context
• Interdisciplinary globally distributed groups work together with local students and
researchers
• Collaborate and build an online learning community through ICTs and Social Media
• Learning driven by the problem and scaffolded by seminars, discussion groups, researcher interaction
• Student groups produce a small project to gain
credits
COOP – Collaborative Open Online Projects
• Alternative to market-driven MOOCs and
‘courses’ as main form of learning
• Not a course & curriculum - deep engagement with a global problem
• Problem is driver for learning in and between groups building a commited learning community
• Collaboration at scale learning in the group as well as learning from and with other groups
• Forming both small collaborative group
networks as well as large-scaler complex,
learning networks
Shaping and rethinking the future of education
•
The mode 3 university will not emerge on its own – it will be a struggle!
•
Strong push for individualisation of education and EdTech reinforces this!
•
Critical to maintain central values of PBL: groups, collaboration,
knowledge building, critical thinking, reflexivity, ethics•
Develop PBL models and practices that uses technology in a sustainable way
•
Develop digital PBL practices, but:
– Ask difficult questions of education: Who are we benefitting, who are we leaving out
– Ask difficult questions of educational technologies: Whose interest do particular technologies serve, who owns the technologies and the data?
What are the vested interests?
•
Be aware of the magic mirror of EdTech!
PBL – philosophy and values
Distilling educational technologies through PBL philosophy and values
MOO Cs Soci al
Med ia ana Lea rnin g lytic s
Big Da ta
Learning analytics to empower students by improving collaboration and critical reflection
Codin g
H yp e
Social media to support community building and group work
ar M
tis ke
on ati
Educational technologies to support: groups, collaboration, knowledge building, critical thinking, reflexivity, ethics
Provide valuable inputs to the future development of educational technologies – for industry and education
THANK YOU – QUESTIONS
AND COMMENTS?
References for pics
• CC-licensed material from Flickr – starring in no particular order and some not used..:
• https://flic.kr/p/8R3pxY
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• https://flic.kr/p/PVNng
